News and rumor site Fudzilla claims to have had an "interesting chat with key people involved in Nvidia's Ion project," all of which sounded pretty confident about the company's next generation Ion, or Ion 2.

As previously reported, the new Ion chip will act like a discrete GPU, a necessary transition because of how Intel has designed Pinetrail. It will also support Windows 7, boast over 5 hours of battery life, and according to Nvidia, has the potential to run 5 to 10 times faster than Atom with Pine Trail graphics. And while Pinetrail will only be able to play Flash content in SD, Ion 2 will support both SD and HD playback, according to Fudzilla's chit-chat. On top of it all, Ion 2 will support Blu-ray and 1080p, as well as mainstream gaming.

So what's the caveat? Put simply, Ion 2 will cost more than an Atom platform built around Pine Trail. That doesn't seem to bother Nvidia a whole lot, who says that its customers will put a higher value on HD, Blu-ray, transcoding, video editing, and casual gaming capabilities.

There are three main thrusts to the FTC’s complaint against Intel. The first is that Intel used its dominate position in the market to cow computer makers, such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to buy only Intel CPUs. Intel would either threaten to withhold product, or enter into exclusive deals with computer makers that prevented them from marketing computers built with chips from other makers, such as CPUs from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Second, according to the FTC, Intel designed crucial software, which the FTC identifies as a “compiler”, so it deliberately hampered the performance of chips from competitors. Intel failed to disclose their tinkering with the software, thus deceived computer makers about the performance differences between Intel and its competitors.

Third, the FTC says that Intel is now engaging in these same tactics in the graphics processing market. The FTC argues that GPUs are becoming more powerful, lessening the need for sophisticated CPUs, which undermines Intel’s market dominance. To protect its position, Intel is waging its battle against the likes of Nvidia, over which it holds a substantial financial and market advantage.

According to Richard A. Feinstein, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, “Intel has engaged in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly. It's been running roughshod over the principles of fair play and the laws protecting competition on the merits. The Commission’s action today seeks to remedy the damage that Intel has done to competition, innovation, and, ultimately, the American consumer.”

It took Microsoft's Zune HD player to really showcase what Tegra was capable of, and rather than wait for other devices to do the same, Nvidia appears ready to move forward and announce Tegra 2 next month at CES.

"At CES we are going to make a major announcement about the Tegra family," said Micheal Hara, senior vice president of investor relations and communications at Nvidia. "It is highly possible that we will see some very interesting form factors coming out at the same time. [There will be products] shown by our partners using the next-generation Tegra device."

Hara went on to promise that partners will be rolling out Tegra 2-based tablet PCs, smartbooks, netbooks, and MIDs throughout the first half of next year, followed by major roll-outs of smartphones in the second half of 2010.

There isn't a lot known about Tegra 2 at this point, but if we're to take high-ranking Nvidia officials at their word, we can expect Tegra 2 to be at least twice as powerful as its predecessor. The system-on-chip (SoC) will feature a dual-core ARM GPGPU and other powerful graphics technologies yet to be announced.

The University of Antwerp gave everyone a chuckle last year when they built a quaint little supercomputer made out of four high end Nvidia GPUs. Apparently, that was just a practice run. The same group has now constructed a 13 GPU monster of a supercomputer called Fastra II.

The rig contains six dual-GPU Nvidia GTX295 cards and a single GTX275. As you can imagine, there were a few issues getting the whole system up and running. Motherboard manufacturers don’t usually anticipate someone needing to run 13 GPU cores. With a little persistence and a custom BIOS from ASUS, the tiny supercomputer was up and running. The whole affair cost only 6000 Euros, and is capable of twelve teraflops.

The value per teraflop is high considering most conventional supercomputers cost millions of dollars to build and run. You can check out some possible applications and crazy benchmarks here.

Maybe you've been hearing reports that Intel is interested in buying Nvidia, but if you have, don't believe them, says market research firm Jon Peddie Research (JPR), who dismissed the rumblings as "naive speculation." And that whole Larrabee thing?

"Larrabee isn't dead. Wishful thinking won't make Intel or its ambitions go away," JPR said. "The company has, and continues to make, huge investments in the graphics technology and space."

JPR went on to say that as far as Intel's viewpoint goes, esoteric architectures like the GPU ASIC will fade away, unlike the x86 architecture, which as been around for the past 40 years. Besides, says JPR, there exists too many cultural differences between Intel and Nvidia for the two companies to blend together.

"It's unlikely, regardless of how big Intel's checkbook is, that the two companies could ever agree on the price," JPR added. "The Nvidia BOD and shareholders of Nvidia would never approve a friendly acquisition by Intel, and Nvidia has a multi-voting technique that would delay any hostile attempt for over a year."

Intel made a surprise announcement recently when the chip maker said it was canceling its much hyped Larrabee graphics chip, saying the GPU would exist only as a software development platform until further notice. Given all the attention Larrabee has received and now the sudden turn of events, we wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia used the situation as ammunition in its ongoing verbal warfare with Intel. So what did Nvidia have to say?

"The fact that a company with Intel's technical prowess and financial resources has struggled so hard to succeed with parallel computing shows just how exceptionally difficult a challenge this is," Igor Stanek, Nvidia Product PR Manager, told Fudzilla when asked to comment on the situation.

That's quite a bit more tame than we would have expected from Nvidia, but then again, the verbal volleys usually come from Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who once declared the CPU a dead business and promised to open up a can of whoop-ass on the competition.

According to some chatty sources in the PC industry, Acer has placed orders with Nvidia for the company's upcoming Ion 2 chips, which are being designed to support Intel's Pineview parts (Atom N450, N470, D510, and D410 processors).

This is a somewhat different scenario than with the original Ion platform, which was a chipset with IGP. But Intel's Pine Trail-M (netbooks) and Pine Trail-D (nettop) chips have changed things around by moving the northbridge duties -- memory controller and IGP -- onto the CPU. So this time around, Nvidia's Ion 2 part will be more like a discrete GPU, the sources say.

It's a win-win combo for both sides. Acer's Ion-based AspireRevo nettops have been well received by consumers, and Acer expects the same to be true with its Ion 2-based builds.

Asus said it was switching to Nvidia's Ion platform for future netbooks, and making good on that promise, the Eee PC maker on Thursday announced the Eee PC 1201N Multimedia Netbook.

Up until now, a multimedia netbook could be considered an oxymoron, if not a cruel joke, but that certainly isn't the case here. Pushing the boundaries between a netbook and notebook, the 1201N sports a 12.1-inch LED display and comes built around Nvidia's pixel-pushing Ion platform. That's great for graphics, but it doesn't stop there. Instead of the ubiquitous Atom N270 processor found in most netbooks, Asus equipped the 1201N with Intel's Atom 330 dual-core processor.

On the storage front, the new netbook comes with a 250GB hard drive and 500GB of online Asus WebStorage. The online storage space is provided for free for the first year, and after that, you'll have to pony up for a subscription plan.

Other specs include 2GB of DDR2 memory, Wi-Fi, three USB2.0 ports, a 6-cell battery good for up to 5 hours of run time, and Windows 7.

Now is not the time to abandon the PC as a gaming platform, not with all the money at stake. According to Jon Peddie Research, gamers will spend over $32 billion next year upgrading their PCs, and that's the kind of number that draws the attention of hardware vendors. Enter Nvidia, who suddenly felt the urge to reiterate its commitment to the gaming industry.

"Gaming remains our bread and butter focus area. However, there are other opportunities for us to explore as the company grows, such as the HPC sector," explained Bryan Del Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia.

Del Rizzo was responding to rumors that Nvidia was no longer interested in gaming for the HPC (high performance computing) market, calling the notion "completely unfounded" and "ludicrous," TGDaily reports.

"Look, I understand that some people might be feeling anxious because we haven't published detailed information about Fermi-based GeForce cards," said Del Rizzo. "But, I can assure you that data is forthcoming. The wait will be worth it, especially when people understand what products based on Fermi are capable of."

So there you have it: PC gaming is alive and well, and so is Nvidia's interest in catering to computer gamers.

MSI on Wednesday announced it has begun shipping its new Wind Top AE2220 all-in-one desktop PC. The AE2220 takes its place as MSI's flagship all-in-one and expands the company's fast growing Wind Top series.

"The MSI Wind Top is an awesome all-purpose family PC. Share photos, edit videos, play games, watch HD video -- our Ion graphics processor means you can have it all," said Drew Henry, general manger for Ion and GeForce products at Nvidia.